Swedish hot rodder reinvents the El Camino

Bernt Karlsson built his concept car in about 1 1/2 years. MICHAEL KITADA/FOR THE REGISTER

Rumors have swirled for years that General Motors will bring its famed El Camino back to market, but Bernt Karlsson has beat them to it. The Swedish car builder, who operates a hobby garage called Customs by Bernt in Huntington Beach, has created a one-off utility coupe that fuses the front end of a Pontiac G8, the face of a modern Camaro and the back end of an Australian "pickup car" into a vehicle he's dubbed the Holden8R: "Holden" for the Australian automaker that sells a modern-day El Camino called the Ute, "8" for the supercharged 6-liter V-8 that rockets it down the road, and "R" for the ruckus it's causing everywhere it goes.

Karlsson took the wraps off his glossy orange creation at November's SEMA Show in Las Vegas. It makes its Southern California debut this weekend at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, after which it will be driven into a box and shipped to his native Sweden to continue making the rounds.

Karlsson, 57, has long been a fan of vintage American iron, especially pickups and El Caminos.

"They're a good vehicle for California rather than a big car or big truck, which wastes gas," said Karlsson, who made his first sort-of El Camino in 1994 when he cut a Camaro in half, stretched it out, carved a cargo hold in its hind quarters and dubbed it the El Camaro.

But he was inspired to try it again after visiting Australia two years ago. Karlsson was there to attend various car shows but his greatest inspiration took place somewhere unexpected: In the airport parking lot.

"As soon as I walked outside, I saw a black El Camino," said Karlsson, blue eyes beaming from the reminiscence of his discovery.

Only the car wasn't an El Camino. It was a Holden Ute – a modern vehicle that combines a coupe body style with a cargo bed out back that, in the land down under, is as ubiquitous as the Toyota Prius this side of the pond.

Holden is an Australian company that's been involved with auto manufacturing since 1908. For 82 years, it's been General Motors' Australian subsidiary, producing GM cars under the Holden name primarily for the Australasian market.

Karlsson desperately wanted to buy a Holden Ute, but shipping it to the U.S. wasn't possible. Holden exports the car as a Chevrolet Lumina Ute to South Africa and the Middle East. It has yet to wash up here due, at least in part, to incongruent safety regulations.

Karlsson was undeterred. With the help of a friend, he found a Ute that had been crashed, cut it in half and shipped its back end to the U.S. as scrap metal. He opted against sending the front end, as well, since the Holden Ute is right-hand drive.

Learning that the now-defunct Pontiac G8 was built on the same platform as the Holden Ute, Karlsson found a G8 in Texas, shipped it to California and cut it in half, too. Trashing the Pontiac's back end, he welded the two ends together. Everything, from the G8's drive shaft to the axles to the gas tank, fit like a puzzle piece with the Holden.

Over the course of six months, Karlsson furthered his FrankenCamino, smoothing the roof to look more like a modern Camaro and lifting an actual Camaro's face – the aggressive grille and lights of the 2013 model. For the shapely fenders, it was back to the junkyards of Australia and a Holden performance vehicle called the Maloo. Not surprisingly, for a car with a sports pedigree, the Maloo fenders were sourced from cars that had either crashed or burned and mailed to Karlsson, who welded them into place and topped the whole thing with two-tone paint in his favorite colors just days before pushing off for SEMA.

In Vegas, Karlsson said, the first person to talk to him about the Holden8R was General Motors' SEMA relations manager, Bob Kern, who asked: "How did you get this car into the States?"

For at least two years the General Motors rumor mill has been working overtime. In 2010, the automotive web site Jalopnik cited unnamed GM sources who said the El Camino would be coming back to the U.S. market next year as a 2015 model. A General Motors spokesman said Monday that the company is "not able to comment or speculate on any potential future product plans."

Despite a Spanish name that means, appropriately, "the road," the El Camino is perceived as quintessentially American. Its roots, however, hark back to Australia when a farmer's wife wrote to the manager of Ford's Australian plant, asking: "Why don't you build people like us a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry pigs to market on Mondays?"

Bernt Karlsson built his concept car in about 1 1/2 years. MICHAEL KITADA/FOR THE REGISTER
Bernt Karlsson, 57, used the front of a 2013 Camero the middle of a 2009 Pontiac and the bed of a 2009 Australian Holden to create his version of the El Camino. MICHAEL KITADA/FOR THE REGISTER
Orange works. MICHAEL KITADA/FOR THE REGISTER
Bernt Karlsson works out of a garage in Huntington Beach. It took him about 18 months to conceive and build his new vehicle. MICHAEL KITADA/FOR THE REGISTER

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